Idea to sort of turn fractals intoa seasonal mode

[zealex.9410]

The idea as you can see comes from nike and its likely inspired from arpg that reset every couple of months with new rewards and modifiers to make the seasons replayble and fun.

If i could also add to this id like smth like the challenges from path of exile (which is a 40 tier mastery achievement sort of system that has cool rewards every couple of tiers. They could tie recoloured fractal weapons or recolours of ad infinitum maybe ever a fractal armor set finally.

He also suggests to make ar an acount wide progression system which in all honesty would make the mode alot less daunting for new players.

 

Regardless what ppl think of Nike (or me) i think these are solid idea that would make fractals not also refreshing to play every x months but also a race event for content creators to cover and partake in which would bring more attention to the game on youtube and twitch.

Edited October 4, 2021 by zealex.9410

[mindcircus.1506]

It's rare that I disagree with Nike.

While I love the idea of seasons and decent rewards for doing a 1-100 run, I think the awarding of an exclusive gizmo would just encourage what we have seen on the PvP scene.

This game doesn't need more gatekept exclusive rewards RMT'ed via account sharing

...and that is exactly what would happen.

[zealex.9410]

5 hours ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

It's rare that I disagree with Nike.

While I love the idea of seasons and decent rewards for doing a 1-100 run, I think the awarding of an exclusive gizmo would just encourage what we have seen on the PvP scene.

This game doesn't need more gatekept exclusive rewards RMT'ed via account sharing

...and that is exactly what would happen.

Not sure about the gatekeeping part but i guess the rmt part holds ground? I still think the idea overall is solid and rewards more than just thefirst group to clear 100.

[mindcircus.1506]

3 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

Not sure about the gatekeeping part but i guess the rmt part holds ground? I still think the idea overall is solid and rewards more than just thefirst group to clear 100.

You need to watch the video about what the top NA team was/is doing re:gatekeeping the MATs and gizmos.

Saying that a small group of players won't do the same in PvE by selling the wins and messing over other teams is 100% copium farming.

The audience for this would be much larger and has much more disposable income.

 

As for the rest, I am completely in.

Seeing what value the seasonal format did in BDO and PoE was impressive. Bringing something similar to GW can do nothing but good.

Something like this could also provide a non-raid PvE path to legendary armour and address the complaints of it's acquisition behind an abandoned game mode without just handing it out for kills on Karka Queen.

[Fueki.4753]

I do fractals only occasionally (maybe once or twice a week) and would rather not have my progress removed every few months.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[zealex.9410]

8 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I do fractals only occasionally (maybe once or twice a week) and would rather not have my progress removed every few months.

A couple things to consider, they could decouple ar from gear and make it a mastery sort of progression, meaning you wouldntnhave to regrind it or they could just have this seasonal mode as a mode and keep the existing thing as is.

[Vidit.7108]

While getting to fractal 100 doesn't actually take that long, this idea sounds exhausting and not fun. It eliminates the casual fractal player and turns the game mode into a weird rat race every 4 months. Returning players suddenly have their progression erased, and for what exactly? No one cares if you have an exclusive title, but if you want one Fractal God already exists. If you want more rewards you can do the weeklies and doing more lower level fractals gives you more boxes.

New players' bigger problem than AR is needing someone higher level than them to access all the dailies in the tier they have access to. To the extent AR is stopping them for going higher it's more of an infusion slot problem since they need Ascended armor.

Fractal rewards are already pretty good. The population in t4 is healthy and active. The other tiers go through periods of healthy activity and lulls, I don't think this fixes that. I also don't think that this is adding anything fractals are missing or really shaking things up much. What you'll have is people in LFG with "Climbing back to T4 must have Savant/Prodigy" every once in awhile.

[Fueki.4753]

7 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

A couple things to consider, they could decouple ar from gear and make it a mastery sort of progression, meaning you wouldntnhave to regrind it or they could just have this seasonal mode as a mode and keep the existing thing as is.

AR isn't the progress in Fractals, the personal fractal level is.

And your idea is to remove that progress every few months, effectively invalidating the player effort that went into it.

All your idea will cause is players being pissed off at the system and stop doing fractals for good. In Arenanet's statistics, this will show up as further decreased engagement in instanced group content, which will lead to even less development spent on it.

Edited October 6, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[zealex.9410]

5 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

AR isn't the progress in Fractals, the personal fractal level is.

And your idea is to remove that progress every few months, effectively invalidating the player effort that went into it.

All your idea will cause is players being pissed off at the system and stop doing fractals for good. In Arenanet's statistics, this will show up as further decreased engagement in instanced group content, which will lead to even less development spent on it.

Ar serves as the progression other gear based mmos have for their treadmill, its what anet was hope would bring that feeling to that part of gw2.

The incentive to repeat the climb will exist with either rewards, gizmos, titles etc. Very similar to how arpgs have seasons and its been proven to be very sucessful.

[zealex.9410]

7 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

While getting to fractal 100 doesn't actually take that long, this idea sounds exhausting and not fun. It eliminates the casual fractal player and turns the game mode into a weird rat race every 4 months. Returning players suddenly have their progression erased, and for what exactly? No one cares if you have an exclusive title, but if you want one Fractal God already exists. If you want more rewards you can do the weeklies and doing more lower level fractals gives you more boxes.

New players' bigger problem than AR is needing someone higher level than them to access all the dailies in the tier they have access to. To the extent AR is stopping them for going higher it's more of an infusion slot problem since they need Ascended armor.

Fractal rewards are already pretty good. The population in t4 is healthy and active. The other tiers go through periods of healthy activity and lulls, I don't think this fixes that. I also don't think that this is adding anything fractals are missing or really shaking things up much. What you'll have is people in LFG with "Climbing back to T4 must have Savant/Prodigy" every once in awhile.

Reseting it for everyone would naturally bring the community back to square 1 so finding ppl to climb to your desired tier would be easier than trying to climb the tiers now.

[Vidit.7108]

2 minutes ago, zealex.9410 said:

Reseting it for everyone would naturally bring the community back to square 1 so finding ppl to climb to your desired tier would be easier than trying to climb the tiers now.

No it wouldn't bring them back to square one. Are you saying you're going to have to remove UFE and titles like LNHB, DwD, Fractal Savant/Prodigy/Champion/God? Will you only be able to keep Ad Infinitum for 4 months? These are all ways to separate experienced players from non-experienced players and they WILL require proof like this if they are forced to climb from t1 back to t4. There is still going to be a very small pool of experienced players willing to take anyone from 0 to 100.

A lot of players have moved into static groups and large discords to find and guarantee faster clears with known experienced players. Players CAN pug in t1-t3 for weekly rewards already, a lot of them don't because the less people know what they are doing the longer it takes to do fractals; even if the fight is technically easier. I could blow through T1 in an hour with players I find in T4 pugs, probably T2 in about the same time. But that's with people who know what they are doing. When I try healing players in t3 a lot of runs are a trash fire nightmare that takes me up to 45 minutes longer than the same fractals in the t4 daily.
 
I pug dailies exclusively. I am someone who does the weeklies, I can be patient with people who don't know what they're doing for a maximum of 16 fractals a week. Some weeks I do less. If this system came into existence I'd find a static because I can't do that for 75 fractals in a row just to get back to T4s.

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, zealex.9410 said:

 

The incentive to repeat the climb will exist with either rewards, gizmos, titles etc. Very similar to how arpgs have seasons and its been proven to be very sucessful.

And the massively bigger disincentive of your progress being invalidated will have people stop doing fractals for good.

The few people that might go for those trinkets and don't already do fractals, won't make up for the bigger who will stop doing fractals.

1 hour ago, zealex.9410 said:

Reseting it for everyone would naturally bring the community back to square 1 so finding ppl to climb to your desired tier would be easier than trying to climb the tiers now.

That only works assuming all the people who are doing fractals now, would still do them with your kind of change.

You are completely ignoring the substantial drop out across all skill levels of people, who simply can't be bothered progressing through fractals, when their efforts get invalidated later anyway.

It's guaranteed that even some of the T4 CM frequenters would stop bothering with fractals, if they are forced to restart from T1.

In the end, it will be a loss of players and player engagement in fractals.

Edited October 6, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Nash.2681]

The base idea of some seasonal incentive to play fractals- I like. 
Add some exclusive rewards to them- I like.
Gate those rewards to just a few players that happen to have time to play at the start of the season- no no no no no.
Reset fractal progress for such a season- another big no.
Changing AR to an account-wide system- indifferent since I'm swimming in infusions already, but I wouldn't mind.

tl;dr: I'm all for something like the recent fractal rush event, with exclusive rewards for everyone participating and completing it, but over a longer period coupled with a less stressfull time investment. 

Edited October 6, 2021 by Nash.2681

[zealex.9410]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And the massively bigger disincentive of your progress being invalidated will have people stop doing fractals for good.

The few people that might go for those trinkets and don't already do fractals, won't make up for the bigger who will stop doing fractals.

That only works assuming all the people who are doing fractals now, would still do them with your kind of change.

You are completely ignoring the substantial drop out across all skill levels of people, who simply can't be bothered progressing through fractals, when their efforts get invalidated later anyway.

It's guaranteed that even some of the T4 CM frequenters would stop bothering with fractals, if they are forced to restart from T1.

In the end, it will be a loss of players and player engagement in fractals.

You are ignoring that the game isnt what it used to be back in hot or when fractals came out, the game has been powercrept past t1 to t4 fractals.

[zealex.9410]

1 hour ago, Nash.2681 said:

The base idea of some seasonal incentive to play fractals- I like. 
Add some exclusive rewards to them- I like.
Gate those rewards to just a few players that happen to have time to play at the start of the season- no no no no no.
Reset fractal progress for such a season- another big no.
Changing AR to an account-wide system- indifferent since I'm swimming in infusions already, but I wouldn't mind.

tl;dr: I'm all for something like the recent fractal rush event, with exclusive rewards for everyone participating and completing it, but over a longer period coupled with a less stressfull time investment. 

Only a couple of the rewards like maybe a top 100 or a thousand players to reach one hyndred as well as the first group to reach 100 the majority of rewards would come to everyone that would participate and would reach milstones.

[Nash.2681]

2 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

Only a couple of the rewards like maybe a top 100 or a thousand players to reach one hyndred as well as the first group to reach 100 the majority of rewards would come to everyone that would participate and would reach milstones.

I got that, but I still do strongly disagree. Introducing a 3-4 month long event, yet excluding ppl meeting the skill floor from some of the rewards, just because they have a job / live in inconvenient timezones / have a life besides GW2 and can't invest their time right at the beginning is a no-go for me. We already have a softer form of this in form of seasonal event dailies punishing those that can't split their gaming time evenly across the week but have to focus on a few days. I don't want to see this emphazised.

[Asum.4960]

I like the idea of Seasonal events with unique mechanics and rewards, and that's something that is proven to work well with ARPG's. Fractal's would definitely be a good place for that in GW2. 

 

That said, just like in many ARPG's, that definitely should be an optional seasonal mode with the base progression not being wiped - as in you can either play Fractals and dailies as normal, and/or participate in the seasonal progression with extra incentives. 

 

AR doesn't really need wipes or changes for that, and transitioning it to an Account wide stat would be rather difficult, as we are talking about voiding potentially thousands of gold for many players. 

 

As for the race to 100 limited and exclusive reward thing, I'm fairly critical of that. I know some players really enjoy that, but incentivizing players to spend ~20h straight rushing through the season just to lord some exclusivity over others seems pretty unhealthy to me, and as others mentioned pretty unfair in terms of time zones and availability. 

Plus there is no point in 4 month seasons if they are "solved" in <24h, besides being a content mine for content creators. 

Overall, that just seems like a toxicity factory.

 

The whole thing also runs the risk of overall lowering the Fractal population, with people just playing in extreme and unhealthy bursts, and then largely quitting both seasonal and normal play of Fractals until the next one. 

So while less exciting, making seasons a less defining and shorter thing in which everybody who wants to can participate and get to the end of to the get all the rewards, as well as keeping normal play viable/attractive with downtimes, seems to me the better choice over all if such a system were implemented.

[zealex.9410]

On 10/6/2021 at 2:11 PM, Vidit.7108 said:

No it wouldn't bring them back to square one. Are you saying you're going to have to remove UFE and titles like LNHB, DwD, Fractal Savant/Prodigy/Champion/God? Will you only be able to keep Ad Infinitum for 4 months? These are all ways to separate experienced players from non-experienced players and they WILL require proof like this if they are forced to climb from t1 back to t4. There is still going to be a very small pool of experienced players willing to take anyone from 0 to 100.

A lot of players have moved into static groups and large discords to find and guarantee faster clears with known experienced players. Players CAN pug in t1-t3 for weekly rewards already, a lot of them don't because the less people know what they are doing the longer it takes to do fractals; even if the fight is technically easier. I could blow through T1 in an hour with players I find in T4 pugs, probably T2 in about the same time. But that's with people who know what they are doing. When I try healing players in t3 a lot of runs are a trash fire nightmare that takes me up to 45 minutes longer than the same fractals in the t4 daily.
 
I pug dailies exclusively. I am someone who does the weeklies, I can be patient with people who don't know what they're doing for a maximum of 16 fractals a week. Some weeks I do less. If this system came into existence I'd find a static because I can't do that for 75 fractals in a row just to get back to T4s.

Only the personal rank would reset no other achievment of item would be reset. You are looking for arguements against this idea.

[zealex.9410]

On 10/6/2021 at 7:24 PM, Nash.2681 said:

I got that, but I still do strongly disagree. Introducing a 3-4 month long event, yet excluding ppl meeting the skill floor from some of the rewards, just because they have a job / live in inconvenient timezones / have a life besides GW2 and can't invest their time right at the beginning is a no-go for me. We already have a softer form of this in form of seasonal event dailies punishing those that can't split their gaming time evenly across the week but have to focus on a few days. I don't want to see this emphazised.

If they cant in 4 months without losing ootions and ar progress in fractals im not sure what they add to the playerpool now.

[zealex.9410]

4 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

I like the idea of Seasonal events with unique mechanics and rewards, and that's something that is proven to work well with ARPG's. Fractal's would definitely be a good place for that in GW2. 

 

That said, just like in many ARPG's, that definitely should be an optional seasonal mode with the base progression not being wiped - as in you can either play Fractals and dailies as normal, and/or participate in the seasonal progression with extra incentives. 

 

AR doesn't really need wipes or changes for that, and transitioning it to an Account wide stat would be rather difficult, as we are talking about voiding potentially thousands of gold for many players. 

 

As for the race to 100 limited and exclusive reward thing, I'm fairly critical of that. I know some players really enjoy that, but incentivizing players to spend ~20h straight rushing through the season just to lord some exclusivity over others seems pretty unhealthy to me, and as others mentioned pretty unfair in terms of time zones and availability. 

Plus there is no point in 4 month seasons if they are "solved" in <24h, besides being a content mine for content creators. 

Overall, that just seems like a toxicity factory.

 

The whole thing also runs the risk of overall lowering the Fractal population, with people just playing in extreme and unhealthy bursts, and then largely quitting both seasonal and normal play of Fractals until the next one. 

So while less exciting, making seasons a less defining and shorter thing in which everybody who wants to can participate and get to the end of to the get all the rewards, as well as keeping normal play viable/attractive with downtimes, seems to me the better choice over all if such a system were implemented.

The gizmo for first 100 clear wouldnt be the knly reward but a reward. I was thinking also milestone rewards like the challenges in poe with a final reward for clearing fractal 100. The gizmo for the first team is just there to reward the msot dedicated and skillful and create day one excitement.

[Asum.4960]

51 minutes ago, zealex.9410 said:

The gizmo for first 100 clear wouldnt be the knly reward but a reward. I was thinking also milestone rewards like the challenges in poe with a final reward for clearing fractal 100. The gizmo for the first team is just there to reward the msot dedicated and skillful and create day one excitement.

I get the idea behind it and I'm not saying it's objectively bad or anything, there just no world in which I see Anet going for what is essentially a official speed running tournament that asks it's players to sit there and play in a hardcore/high level capacity for ~20h non stop for a chance to get exclusive, limited, one time ingame rewards. 

 

And I have to say, even as one of those 0.01% fractal players with God, Portal, knowing all the skips and so on who could realistically go for such a reward, I'm personally not a fan of such extreme exclusivity. 

 

There is a line in terms of exclusivity for rewards at which point they just serve to deject players and breed hostility, rather than serving as inspiration to participate, and just like the PvP Gizmos, this concept is well over there too - and as new addition would be greatly more scrutinized, especially by the casual PvE playerbase, being part of the PvE ecosystem. 

I can't see such an implementation going over well or doing much good for the game over all, other than for some small streamer communities showcasing such races (hell, the forums got flooded with hate threads by casual players for Anet daring to promote community organized Raid speedrunning events with tiny Blogposts or Tweets). 

 

GW2 just doesn't have the right community for that (both ingame and from a media perspective), and while it's true that you have to build it first for them to come, I also think that ship sailed quite some years ago for GW2. 

 

Seasonal progression events for Fractals with unique incentives in theory are a great idea, but the only way I see such a thing working for GW2 is if they are focused on accessibility, inspiring new players to jump in and bolstering the Fractal playerbase (with some nuggets for hardcore players to go for hidden in there), rather than promoting even by hardcore standards pretty extreme first come exclusive reward races. 

 

While that might create "excitement" in the community, it probably would not be the kind you are thinking.

Edited October 9, 2021 by Asum.4960

[maddoctor.2738]

On 10/6/2021 at 6:43 AM, Vidit.7108 said:

While getting to fractal 100 doesn't actually take that long, this idea sounds exhausting and not fun.

 

This 100%. Finishing 100 levels every few months would be exhausting and never fun, regardless of how much time they will allocate for this so call "season".

 

Furthermore, rewarding those that reach the top -first- is another thing I'd never agree with. This puts pressure on players to fit their life schedule around the game (which is NEVER a good thing) so they can get to the top first to get the reward. You are giving rewards to players that have a lot of free time in a week, and not for example those that demonstrate a higher skill level.

 

The idea of a "season" isn't a bad one, however it needs to be shorter, much shorter in duration than 100 fractals and also designed in a way that players with lots of free time cannot get the rewards based on their free time.

[Infusion.7149]

Ask casual players what they think instead of people far too invested in the game.

From his own comments:

Quote

Yeah, I think it would be an omega hype streamer event. people would 24 hour no life it and it would get GW2 huge twitch attention.

Instead of such a suggestion they could just have more "fractal rush" events.

Regardless it would just be another thing for people to complain about: see complaint threads about too much time to hit weekly WVW skirmish ticket cap for example.

Edited October 9, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Vidit.7108]

12 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

Only the personal rank would reset no other achievment of item would be reset.

I understand that. But personal rank is not the only way to prove you've done T4 fractals.
You're claiming that inexperienced players will have more people willing to help them climb. I am saying other players are not going to work with newbies if they can help it. So I am telling you the consequence is players requiring these items and achievements in LFG descriptions.

 

 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

From his own comments

I don't know who Nike is, but he's greatly overestimating how long it would take an average team with experience to clear through 1-100. I'd put it at 6-8 hours, no need to stay up late unless it starts late. But I want to emphasize most people don't want to spend that time to reclimb to 100 every 4 months for no good reason.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Vidit.7108

[zealex.9410]

16 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Ask casual players what they think instead of people far too invested in the game.

From his own comments:

Instead of such a suggestion they could just have more "fractal rush" events.

Regardless it would just be another thing for people to complain about: see complaint threads about too much time to hit weekly WVW skirmish ticket cap for example.

That refers to the manority of hardcore players that would go hard for thenfirst clear which would create a twitch event as well (like world first raid clears). Such dedication isnt indicative of the community as a whole however, 1) thats not the only reward i propose i also propose a general milestone based reward structure and 2) despite not being so dedicated a good part of the community likes to follow and watch such events (this isnt only a gw2 thing, thats a gaming thing in general).